I think I’ve found a new text to speech alternative.
I get it. Audio is a good thing. I love to listen to music and live with a family of musicians, so I appreciate the whole audiophile sound quality thing. It is helpful when words make sounds at all. Some folks just learn and retain information better from the spoken word. Some people have vision issues and rely on spoken word media. Some people just like to listen while they drive or do other things (that’s me – I listen to podcasts while I knit.) There are any number of reasons why it is a good idea to have an audio echo of this blog.
I get it about listening to spoken word content.
On the other hand, creating spoken word content isn’t my strong suit. Put me in front of a keyboard and I’ll write anything you want and imagine I’m giving Shakespeare a run for the money in the process. Put me in front of a microphone to speak and I’ll sound like drunk Yoda at best.
Spotify pooched the old podcast (with the Clairvoyant Confessional episodes) in the switch from Anchor Fm to Spotify for Podcasters and of course things are weirder still as WordPress integration ends. I’m closing the old feed.
If you are an audio person, please be sure to follow the “Sage Sips” feed that matches the free posts here, on ko-fi and on substack.
Right now, the podcast will consist of the Monday week-ahead pathway Tarot readings, but that can change – so this is your chance to influence what content goes into the podcast. Let me know in the comments below what else you want in the podcast and I’ll see what I can do.
Sorry this popped up just when I thought everything was consistent and settled. Ah well, if it’s not one thing it’s another. Life is nothing if not change.
See you tomorrow for the Path reading for the week of May 8-14!
A Tarot reading for your week ahead in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
Right here, right now is all there is. All we have is this present moment. Our superpower is that we can choose IF and how to connect it to the past and the future.
Merry Monday everyone!
I like the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach. Simple is always best. Right now, functionality seems more important than elegance. Unless and until I get feedback from all of you to the contrary, I’m going to write these free for all Monday Week Ahead Pathway readings in the same format as I would a private three-card Tarot reading. It’s comfortable. It works. And it’s a Monday where I could use a few extra sips of coffee. Here we go.
The cards today are:
Fading energy: Knight of Wands
Current energy: Knight of Rings (pentacles)
Growing energy: The Hermit
General Pattern:
The Two minor arcana cards are both court cards which holds a little more energetic ‘zing’ than the numbered cards or the ace. These two minor arcana cards lead into a major arcana in the growing energy position. I take that to be a clue that the vague ennui and introvert energy from the past few weeks has indeed swung in the other direction. This is the starter’s signal we’ve been waiting for.
Go!
Now!
If we are hearing the track and field starter’s pistol, the event is a sprint. It feels like a blip, a short lived window of opportunity to get a flurry of stuff done before things quiet again for a time. If today is not the day, then look for cues this week about when to hit the start button on a project or idea that you’ve been contemplating. Hints about timing may be on the near horizon.
Knight cards symbolize action.
In the card draw video above, I’m using my current favorite deck, the Alleyman’s Tarot with the permission of Publishing Goblin LLC. The Alleyman’s deck uses disks and rings for this suit, not just pentacles. Artwork on this particular card is by Amrit Brar for the Marigold Tarot. I don’t know if I’ll ever buy another deck, but if I ever do, the Marigold is high on my list of decks to consider.
Of course the meanings and energies are all fairly interchangeable no matter what deck you use or what name you call the suit. I still call them coins instead of pentacles much of the time because I read with the Art Nouveau deck for years before branching out into other decks. But we can talk about decks another time.
Today, let’s call it rings. The knight of rings is about steady, persistent action. It has a plodding but inexorable quality about it. Consistent, unending, persistent small actions can lead to big results. Raindrops can flatten a mountain given enough time.
Don’t give up on yourself even if your enthusiasm for something good and right starts to fade. Keep chipping away and you can move your mountain too.
The knight of wands also suggests action. The earth element knight of pentacles acts, but is OK with a glacial pace over geologic time. The knight of wands is fire element. This energy may be less focused, less enduring and more chaotic but it is, well, energetic. What it lacks in focus it makes up for with high wattage and unbridled enthusiasm.
I get the mental image of an old Wile E Coyote style cartoon bundle of dynamite wired to a big old fashioned alarm clock.
The think you’ve been ticking away at is ready to blow up, in the viral internet sense of the word.
If you want to catch lightning in a bottle, you have to study electricity and stand out in a few metaphoric thunderstorms. If you have been preparing and chipping and ticking away at something, then your storm front may be on its way soon. Ready your bottle and listen for the thunder, so to speak.
I still associate the knight of wands with the TV series “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.”
If you’ve worked and prepared and keep your eyes open for opportunity, magic might happen for you, too.
The Hermit is from the major arcana. Moving from court cards to a major arcana card hints that this is a time of growing activity and dynamics.
On the other hand, it IS the hermit card. By it’s nature it speaks of a return to quiet and contemplation. The lantern and guiding light that is so ubiquitous on Hermit cards is here again in the Aka Skyweb art. This energy speaks to inner guidance and self-discovery.
Slow persistant energy explodes to frenetic progress for a short time but then it needs to be reviewed. I keep getting the phrase “after action report.” Is that a law enforcement thing? Or military? Or both? I want to associate it with first responders of some sort. Preparation, followed by fast action, followed by assessment of the action followed by adjustment and improvement and preparation for the next time.
That pattern may be associated with emergency services or military readiness, but it can be a successful pattern for anyone. My attention is drawn back to the knight of rings with the notion that this advice is particularly targeted toward pentacle, coin and ring kinds of concerns. This week, this reading is very much focused on career and work and wealth. As always with this suit, there is a focus on logic, groundedness, and practicality – even when you are in the middle of a big cartoon ka-BOOM of energy and change.
I see black tourmaline as a helpful energy to protect and steady during the high energy times.
I get the scent of amber and sandalwood to also ground and balance but also support meditation and introspection and learning from experience when it is all said and done.
And there the energy steps back, with a spark of hope that you have all enjoyed the reading and find it helpful.
Thank you all for reading and listening.
The reading fits in here, too. It’s a free for all kind of week.
All of the posts on the Sage Words Tarot blog on both wordpress and ko-fi plus the Sage Sips newsletter on Substack are free for everyone the week of April 24, 2023. The Sage Sips podcast is always free on Spotify plus a variety of other platforms. None of this is advertising monetized – even if you see an ad, I don’t see a penny from it.
All of this Tarot content is supported by readers and listeners like you. If you enjoy these weekly pathway readings, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to see all of the other posts including Q&A, one card meditations, behind the scenes, quote of the day and more.
If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration
Nikola Tesla
I’m not saying that tuning forks can be used in any sort of psychic way. I’m saying that psychics sorta work like tuning forks – sometimes. I’m not saying that this science explains psychics or that there is any kind of causal relationship here. I’m using this objective physics demonstration as an analogy to describe and communicate something a psychic or intuitive might experience.
K?
So all of you pedantic skeptics out there just listen for a minute. Science is the best method we have for figuring stuff out – especially physical world stuff. But in 500 plus years of years of screwing around and writing stuff down as Adam Savage put it, science hasn’t wrapped its head and arms entirely around everything, particularly when it comes to things like consciousness, philosophy, and other internal, subjective esoterica. But that, again, is a post for another day.
For now, for all of you wonderful, terrific people who have been following the main website blog, to you first and foremost, I want to thank you. I know everybody says it, but really I couldn’t do this without you. That goes triple for my private clients and ko-fi Tarot Table members. I really REALLY couldn’t do this without you. Thank you, and thank you again.
image: bitmoji
Second – sorry for all the repetition headed your way. I want to use the next week of free-for-all posts to introduce Sage Words Tarot (plus some faves from the Modern Oracle / TaoCraft Tarot archives) to the paid subscription part of the Ko-Fi blog and Substack newsletter.
Which explains why I’m back to talking about resonance again today.
Looking back to late 2019 and very early 2020, it really is remarkable how many similar questions came to Tarot readings. It seems like there was a whole cadre of people who felt like something was wrong but couldn’t quite figure out what. They felt disconnected and worried about the future for no real reason. Those were the advanced students. They were the perceptive folks who sensed the storm on the horizon that we all were about to face: pandemic lockdowns.
To no one’s surprise that pattern continued for a year or so.
Reading after reading combined with a healthy dose of my own experience, it became pretty clear what was going on. All of the collective fear, anger and anxiety about the pandemic combined with the political climate in the United State was creating a toxic energy brew that was ringing a lot of intuitive bells regardless of our awareness of it.
I like the word zeitgeist, that German word for the mood and spirit of a time, or in other words the energy of the time. Sometimes energy sensitive people will vibe with the energy around them so strongly it feels like it is coming from the inside. Outside energy makes their own tennis balls bounce so to speak.
Please, take a moment and watch the publicly available demonstration on YouTube with the tuning forks. When the conditions are just so, the untouched tuning fork vibrates from the air pressure – the sound – created from the other tuning fork of the same frequency. The second tuning fork is energy sensitive. The second tuning fork wasn’t being whacked by a mallet. It was only being whacked by the air pressure waves created by the OTHER tuning fork that was being whacked by the mallet. The tennis balls are only hanging around so you can see when the second tuning fork is moving or not.
To put it in woo woo terms instead of physics terms…the second tuning fork was reading the energy environment. The tennis balls are like Tarot cards helping to make the whole energy thing more visible and understandable.
Now imagine a whole bunch of tuning forks. Only a few have tennis balls to make the energy a little more visual. Imagine the crowd of tuning forks all have a wide range of sensitivity. Some vibrate to sound a little easier than others. Now imagine the tuning fork that is getting whacked with the mallet is bigger and much louder than usual. It puts out much stronger air pressure sound waves. The non-whacked (resonant) tuning forks all around are vibing stronger than usual, and the ones that usually don’t react to the environmental sound start to vibrate.
Like I said, this isn’t any sort of explanation, just a broad analogy. So it isn’t perfect, but it is telling that matching frequencies are needed for the resonant phenomenon to happen. Moods and emotions can be as contagious as a new virus. When the world tipped into pandemic, all of the fear and worry zipped around the globe right along with it. Because the frequency was one of fear, anger and anxiety, that is the emotions the energy sensitives felt. That’s how the vibe felt to them.
Psychic sensitives didn’t predict it – they just heard the sound at a lower volume and their tennis balls started bouncing before everyone else’s. They read the energy and picked up on the zeitgeist early in the process.
Go back to the video demonstration. Now imaging what would happen if you put a big bell jar over top of the resonant second tuning fork with the tennis balls. You would dampen the sound and possibly stop the second tuning fork from sounding at all.
That’s great if you want to shut out an uncomfortable sound or metaphoric emotion, but the problem is that it would also shut out all of the sounds, all of the frequencies, all the vibes and all of the feelings. That’s generally not an emotionally healthy thing. If it’s your job to read energy and turn it into helpful communication, not being able to read the vibe is a straight up problem.
So what do you do?
A big scary thing is hammering away at a really big tuning fork set to the fear, isolation and anxiety frequency and it feels for all the world like YOU are afraid, isolated and anxious.
Here is what works for me.
Go shields up (or bell jar down) but just briefly.
My intuition is predominantly visual. We call that clairvoyant. I get a fair amount of mental words, sound or music to go with the mental images. That’s called clairaudient. Intuition can come as smells, tastes or physical sensations too, but that seems to be much less common.
If I ever wonder if a particular emotion is welling up for a reason or if it is just the collective zeitgeist making itself known, I tend to use a visualization technique. I use imagination, which is a valid and powerful thing. Imagination may be play for children, but it can be a powerful tool for emotional health when it is wielded by a thoughtful adult.
Try this and see what you think….
The next time you feel a strong emotion or a random mood hits or find yourself in a funk “for no reason” try a little self check.
Imagine something that protects you. Imagine something around you like a protective bubble. Something bigger like that big bell jar from before or a science fiction force field or that real force field that makes same-pole magnets repel each other. If it feels better imagine yourself in a cloak that protects you. Or literally put on a jacket or wrap yourself in a blanket. Whatever you choose, use your imagination to infuse that image or that thing with the ability to shield you from any outside influence. Use your imagination to set the intention that what you feel while you are thus protected is an true and clear insight into your own emotions. It is a fair amount of mental gyration just to simply focus on you and allow yourself to feel whatever you yourself genuinely feel…but we need that sometimes.
Sometimes we need some little bit of ritual or imagination to disrupt our mundane, everyday patterns and shake us out of our mental habits in order to face our emotions for what they are.
Most of the time, I’m pleasantly surprised.
I’ll go a little starship captain and give the “shields up” order and suddenly it is all “HEY! It’s kinda nice and happy in here!” Or, to continue the Sci Fi reference, if there are Klingons off the starboard bow, I can take action to handle it.
Once you know what is internal response and what is outside sensitivity, then you can do something to help the situation.
Setting owning your emotions and healthy emotional boundaries is doing something.
Thank you so much for reading and listening.
This free blog and podcast is 100% audience supported. Please consider a substack subscription, a ko-fi membership, tipping a virtual coffee, or accessing premium content when it appears here on the main website. Private readings are now OPEN and available by email with no appointment needed. That helps too.
Next up, pathway through the week reading tomorrow morning. See you at the next sip!
Sage Words Tarot 